Tuesday, February 19, 2013

Lost: One Indian warrior belonging to the Giants. Jim Thorpe, who was baptized Drags-His-Root by his aboriginal daddy, has disappeared.
...
Jim was scheduled to join the main party of Giants in Harrisburg Sunday evening, but missed connections. The Olympic hero then was expected in St. Louis, but he was not there when the train pulled out last night. McGraw, who has not said so, seems very anxious to locate him.

They eventually found him, obviously. Even in 1913, it would have been difficult to actually lose the most famous athlete on the continent.

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I wasn't aware I had any very strong feelings on that quirk. I don't think much of Houston's stadium, but the most annoying is that wall where if you hit it over the line on the wall it's a homer, even if it just hit the wall.

Now that I think about it, I'd be interested to read about the worst moment in the history of each franchise. It's easy for Cleveland: The Olin/Crews/Ojeda boating incident. Game Seven in '97 and Herb Score taking a line drive to the head are both on the fringes of the picture.

Several others would be much more contentious: For Houston, is it Richard's stroke or Wilson's death? For the Red Sox, is it Conigliaro, Bucky F. Dent, or the sale of Ruth? For the Yankees, is it Gehrig's diagnosis or Munson's plane crash?

I wasn't aware I had any very strong feelings on that quirk. I don't think much of Houston's stadium, but the most annoying is that wall where if you hit it over the line on the wall it's a homer, even if it just hit the wall.

Really? I could have sworn you had sworn at the hill before. You do really dislike the stadium, don't you?

Not everyone likes burying their head in a pile of spreadsheets, but that's how we get our kicks. It hasn't made us rich or successful like Paul DePodesta, but at least we get the satisfaction of bringing you HTC's latest vital statistics.

I guess the order would be something like Chapman-Olin-'97 Series-Score-Colavito Trade.

The trade is famously disastrous, but let's face it: Kuenn played pretty well in his one season as an Indian in 1960, and it's not like a team that was building its pitching staff around Gary Bell, Dick Stigman, and Barry Latman was going to win championships in the American League of the early 1960s, even with Rocky Colavito. The often-overlooked debacle in the aftermath of the Colavito-Kuenn deal was after the 1960 season when Frank Lane freaked out and dumped Kuenn for Willie Kirkland and broken-down Johnny Antonelli.

edit to add: Yes, Kuenn was approaching the end of his career and Kirkland was arguably a better ballplayer after the trade, but the going rate for a 29-year-old eight-time All Star outfielder with a batting title and two doubles titles in three years is considerably higher than a cromulent right fielder and the ghost of Johnny Antonelli.

Now that I think about it, I'd be interested to read about the worst moment in the history of each franchise. It's easy for Cleveland: The Olin/Crews/Ojeda boating incident. Game Seven in '97 and Herb Score taking a line drive to the head are both on the fringes of the picture.

Depends on what you mean by "worst." For the Royals, Dick Howser's death was the most tragic. Chris Chambliss' HR in the 1976 ALCS was the most gut-punching on-field moment. But the worst in terms of impact was probably David Glass buying the team, or John Schuerholz leaving.

I'd call Gil Hodges' untimely death probably the worst in objective terms, although that doesn't seem to be much remembered nowadays, and may or may not have had much on-field impact. (Coke to the first sentence of #29.)

I'm not sure how you can do this for the Cardinals. How do you compare a death (like Kile's or McHenry's) to something like the Denkinger call or Curt Flood breaking wrong (twice) on a long flyball. Can championships lost be a worse moment than the loss of a life?

This would be my pick. You've got legitimate personal tragedy as well significant on field impact. It's made worse by the fact that Tony C. died at such a young age as well. He's one of the great "might have beens" in baseball history in my opinion.

I'd be interested to read about the worst moment in the history of each franchise.

We'll save a lot of time if we just list the good moments for the Cubs and assume everything else was just another worst moment in history.

Actually, off the field, the Cubs have been a reasonably blessed franchise. It's been nearly 50 years, I'm almost even willing to let the Brock trade go. Santo and the HoF is probably the saddest story of the last 40+ years. Ken Hubbs dying in the early 60s would be the tragic moment but it was before my fandom. He was talked about a pretty good bit through the 70s but seemed to fade from the Cub mythos after that.

Der K: Doesn't DePo make the off-season rounds at business symposia, giving speeches about the tao of Moneyball and so forth?

Regarding today's Pittsburg Press, a sad true-crime note from the back page.

PRIEST IS SLAIN TAKING CONFESSION
By United Press.

Mulheim, Feb 19-- A tragedy that shocked the entire countryside occurred here today when Father Wenger, the village priest, was shot and killed by an insane man while taking the confession of a child.

The madman had not been noticed by anyone in the priest's household, and the first intimation of danger came when a shot rang out. The assailant was immediately overpowered and arrested, but with his dying breath Father Wenger pleaded that he be shown consideration.